Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford tweets that Borderlands 2 is gold, following last month's word that the game was complete and on track for its release next month: "Borderlands 2 is now GOLD (360, PS3 EU, PS3 NA, Win PC)! PSN, PS3 JP + others imminent. Official statement to come when all ballots are in." VG247 notes that there is a pretty funny ESRB description for the role-playing shooter sequel:

his is a first-person shooter in which players join rebel forces to take down an oppressive corporation on the fictional planet of Pandora. As players explore open-world environments, they complete missions to gain experience and increase their characters' skills/abilities. Players use machine guns, sniper rifles, flamethrowers, explosives, and weaponized vehicles to kill human-like characters and hostile aliens in frequent combat. Firefights contain realistic gunfire/explosions; injured enemies scream and emit exaggerated splashes of blood. Various weapons result in dismembered limbs or bloody gibs. Some missions depict intense acts of violence: viewing characters getting electrocuted; shooting a man in the face; killing players' incinerating a cult member as part of a ritual sacrifice. The dialogue contains jokes/one-liners that reference sexual material (e.g., “I will hang myself from my own tombstone if in you I can't put my bone,” “If there's anything they love more than getting to second base with their sisters, it's cars,” “Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest.”); during some sequences, players can find and collect adult-themed magazines—though no actual nudity is depicted. One mission requires players to consume three alcoholic beverages from a bar before they can progress. The words “sh*t,” “p*ssies,” and “a*shole” can be heard in the dialogue, in addition to language censored by audible bleeps (e.g., “God-[bleep]-ing-dammit”).

Fair enough. But at what point do we say 'this is dumb, and counter-productive'?

Should thinking be invalidated because this is a 'video game website'?

Note that I'm only talking about Pitchford and the moronic paragraph appearing with this article.

Seeing as how you aren't a raving lunatic like Hellbinder, I guess you are least worth talking to. The problem is not so much that people disagree with you that society is fubar, but that they are being lectured that somehow their choice of entertainment is indicative of their own moral depravity. A morally depraved person may well get an inordinate amount of jollies from running over people and other virtual violent behavior, but that is not anything close the the majority of us here. The insinuation that if you enjoy violent gaming then you must be predisposed to violent behaviors in real life is naive at best and insulting at worst. There is no moral equivalency between shooting a person in a game and shooting someone in real life, and someone not insane is not in any way made more capable of committing acts of real violence through their videogame experiences. For normal people (the VAST majority of gamers) the enjoyment of playing a violent game does not equate to enjoyment of real violence, and no correlation has ever been made or ever will be made.

TL;DR version: Lighten up. It's just a game, not some deep social commentary.

I absolutely agree that 99% of people can process this, for the time being (in our culture), without becoming violent themselves.

The social commentary comes when the culture has absorbed these subtleties into their reality; that is the analogy of the toilet bowl coming into full force, where we may not see the true effects for another generation. (my parents were 'good people', so I have context to understand violence etc)

Again, does this apply to all media or just games? We've had violent stories and books forever, violent movies for many decades, and violent games for over 20 years. Aside from the aforementioned insane people, about which there's no telling what will set them off, what exactly are you predicting will happen to society, and what evidence do you have to support that hypothesis?

Of course it applies to all media!

This is a gaming board though ... I'll spare you the ranting about other forms of mind-killing.